Raising the Dead

Raising the Dead
By Noah Shachtman


1. What captivates you about the story? How does he paint a picture for the reader? Cite the passages that are most compelling for you.

- The story has presented various stories of people trying to solve cold cases even if they don’t earn from it and their perseverance and obsession attracted me to read the whole article. And it was how the writer presented the facts that made the story very interesting, how he illustrated the scenes and how he explains the feeling of each character.

(from the article) Matthews also makes regular trips to the lonely spot where his father-in-law found the tent girl. The trees must have been in full bloom then – it was the middle of May. Maybe the waters of Eagle Creek weren’t sickly greenish-brown, like rust and blood and industrial waste had been collecting there for two generations. But when Matthews brings me along, there are no leaves. The creek looks like liquid cancer. The air is clotted with the smell of rotting flesh.


2. Who is the target audience for this publication? How does the story relate to them? Does the story appeal to other demographic groups as well, and if so, why?

- the target audience for this publication could be the mystery-book readers, those who might find it interesting to read an article of a real-life situation where a simple local solves a cold case and sometimes cops in real life or the families who are suffering because they have the same situation as the people in the story. The story have presented hope for the families of missing people, that what Matthews did before could be repeated and that someday they’ll find there loved ones too.


3. What "rules" did the writer break?

- The writer wasn’t able to connect the beginning of his story with how he ended it. Though he did broke a rule but still he was able to present the story without any missing links or things that could’ve made the story vague. The ending was the best way to end it based on how he wrote it.


4. How does the writer end the story? Why is it effective?

- The writer ends the story as if he was talking about a living girl. It was quite moving, because the story was talking about how a man solves a case of a missing girl, a dead girl and then another phase of his life begins from there and then numerous findings have made him known by many as the mystery solver but then at the end of his story he again remembers the tent girl as if he had met her and had treasured her from then.